Ghoul's Perspective
by HVK
Summary: Short ficlet for Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and from Heather's perspective, of her particular view of the vampire she had become entangled with and her vague glimpses of the events going on around her, even as she is kept away from it as much as possible. Mainly written to express some ideas for a headcanon of 'all clan playthroughs are canon' via a bunch of fledgelings.


Her vampire friend doesn't come by very often, and when she does, Heather feels like her _friend _is trying to hide something.

(She doesn't like it when Heather calls her 'master'. It's something of a compulsion for Heather now; a tie in her blood, urging her to show obedience, respect… worship. But the cold face bundled up in the hood goes even paler, her lips quirking in an unconscious reaction that looks a bit like a snarl.

Heather isn't so far gone into ghoulhood and love imposed by the blood bond that she can't recognize guilt. She does her best not to make it worse.

The first time Heather caught herself, her benefactor, her savior kissed her on the forehead. It was cold, prickled where her fangs touched the skin. Nevertheless; her savior reserved all her passion for her cause, and for Heather.

In that order. It was the perils of falling in love with an idealist, if love was the right word for a ghoul.)

The Santa Monica apartment was a long time ago, and they'd been on the move pretty often. There had been a place in the sewers, and then a fancier location loaned to them by a friend, a spooky looking woman who looked as new to being a vampire as Heather's friend did. Everyone, Heather noticed in a peripheral way, called her friend the 'fledgeling', or the 'neonate'.

She had a group of friends that Heather believed were in the same kind of boat there. It was hard to notice; the neonate went to a lot of effort to keep Heather's at arm's reach from the secret society she had been pulled into, but Heather wasn't oblivious.

She ran in the company of monsters.

Her savior was a monster.

She still remembered the taste of divine blood on her lips, the glowing eyes of a hooded face, and lips drawn tight in desperate hope.

Even monsters can be more humane than any human. Heather though so, at the least.

So Heather dealt with it, following the neonate from haven to haven, always on the edge of the strange quest she had been pulled into.

The neonate's friends didn't seem much like her besides being fellow monsters. There was a grim girl with a haggard face like a mix of a rat and a worm, horror written upon the flesh, terror seeping out from her; nevertheless, she was kind, in a sarcastic way. The mysterious girl who seemed that she _knew _things; the one who apparently worked for Mister Strauss, the strange old man who had showed up once and had a serious discussion with them all.

A rich lady, a few years older than anyone else there, carrying herself with the attitude of someone who had been born into riches, and had hated every second of the company she had kept at the time; being among monsters suited her better. "At least these guys are honest," she'd joked, and it hadn't seemed like much of one in any case.

The others; a feral boy who snarled when he could and mostly just ignored everyone and reminded Heather a bit of what she figured Count Dracula would really have been like. A wild woman, who spoke in strange poetry and looked at Heather like she was cataloguing ever sordid secret inside her brain. A boy Heather's age, or apparently so, big and broad and elegantly so, and with a fine artist's touch surprising in someone so large.

And then, Heather's benefactor herself; a big and broad woman built like the proverbial brick outhouse (to put it nicer); always ready with a snide remark and holding herself back so much she almost vibrated with suppressed fury, just… all the time.

The whole group came and went on their own, but whatever was going on, they were stuck in it together.

"_There was a whole thing," _her benefactor had mentioned once. "_Our, uh. The ones who made us vampires. All of them knew each other and they were up to something. They had a whole thing planned. They made us all in one night, as part of a bigger plan. I don't know what." _A disdainful sigh, with a mix of longing and irritation. "_Never got to that point."_

A small group of vampires making more vampires, all at once, under the nose of what Heather persisted in calling the head vampire (and wasn't it just a good thing Prince Lacroix had never heard that one). Heather wasn't too aware of how things worked in vampire society but that sounded rather… _bad._

Heather suspected she was in a mess.

And her new friends were doing their best to keep her out of it.

(_"I want to come with you."_

_Her savior looks down at her, crosses her bulky arms and sighs. "No. Absolutely not, Heath. You'll get hurt."_

"_But… I want to see you on the job. I want to help."_

"_You.. want to see the real me."_

_She looks down and glances at her hands._

_Blood can be washed away, or drunk. You can pretend you haven't traded pieces of yourself a bit at a time; little compromises to keep going onwards, to do what seems to be the right thing._

_But you never forget the sound of snapping bones, of cries for mercy silenced beneath your fangs, and how good it feels to crush, to… to kill._

_The only thing that makes the nights easier to live with, is the slow realization of the monster you are becoming, and how much it hurts to keep holding back._

_She manages to sigh. "I don't WANT you to see me like that.")_


End file.
